


The Best Job

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [34]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:14:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26218462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: Strike muses on his job.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Series: Denmark Street musings [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1035698
Comments: 14
Kudos: 67





	The Best Job

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago, just a kind of whimsical piece, and never got around to publishing it. It occurs to me that Troubled Blood might make it no longer relevant, so I thought I had better post!

Strike doesn’t often stop to ponder how much he likes doing the job he’s doing, running his own business. There’s not really been time. When he was in the Army, he’d enjoyed the SIB work, being allocated cases, doing thorough research. The military precision, the careful writing up of notes and presenting of evidence.

Without the backing of the Army, going it alone, things are different. He follows the same protocols, ingrained in him. Do the job, and do it well. But the jobs are usually smaller, often seedier, almost always more boring. There’s the odd high-profile case that really captures his interest and focus, but a lot of what he does is the same thing over and over, and much of it is drudgery.

Like any job, there are elements he doesn’t like. The endless walking, tailing people, hurts his leg. Surveillance is, no matter how stern his mental discipline, hard work. Concentrating for hours when nothing is happening is both tedious and exhausting. Constantly having to be ready for something that likely won’t happen.

Some tasks he downright hates, but they come with the territory. Often he’s fascinated by the people he deals with, by the clients, but sometimes he gets a job he particularly dislikes, such as having to find proof that a high-powered businessman really is sleeping with his PA, evidence of which Strike will have to hand to a lonely wife, struggling at home surrounded by housework and small children. He’s only proving what she already knows, but he still hates having to be the one to say it.

Overnight surveillance is tough, forcing himself to stay awake through the dark hours before dawn, powered by almost-cold coffee and cheap biscuits, and then suffering for the next day or two as he tries to wrangle his body back into some semblance of a normal circadian rhythm. That’s definitely getting harder as he gets older, in the same way that hangovers are starting to linger longer into the next day.

Then there are elements he likes. The buzz of a case that suddenly grips his attention. Putting all the clues together. Laying them out across his desk and glaring at them through a fug of cigarette smoke, trying to work out which are real clues and which irrelevant, and how they all fit together. That tantalising sense of the answer being right there, if he could but see it. The leaps of intuition that come more readily with experience. The cases that truly fascinate him, that occupy his every waking thought, the deliciousness of focused concentration, every synapse in his brain making him feel more alive than usual.

In recent years, of course, there has been Robin to share all this with, Robin who arrived as an unwanted temporary secretary and somehow never left. That, too, has had its good and bad points. There’s no doubt she’s been a godsend for the business; they’ve gone from strength to strength with her added skills. Personally it’s been a more mixed experience. He’s loved her enthusiasm, has enjoyed teaching her, watching her learn and grow. But as his feelings for her have grown, watching her also slog along trying to hold her engagement together, marrying that idiot against all sense and then spending more than a year trying to make the marriage work, has been torture. He’s been worried about her physical and mental health. He’s feared for her safety. Sometimes he’s longed for a time when it was just him, when his working life was simpler.

Then suddenly Robin was free, came to her senses and left her husband. Found a place of her own and settled in. And things have changed between them again, subtly. They’ve talked properly. She has begun to grow in confidence. She’s stopped fearing that he’s always on the point of pulling her off cases and telling her she can’t cope. He suspects her idiot husband was more of a drain on her confidence than she’d realised.

Now they can be properly friends. They consume copious amounts of curry at Nick and Ilsa’s, the four of them talking easily, Robin relaxed and gorgeous as she chatters away to Ilsa. It’s easy, uncomplicated.

They work together like a practised team now, comfortable, knowing each other’s rhythms. Sharing cases, making rounds of tea. Throwing ideas and theories back and forth, finding flashes of inspiration together by bouncing ideas off one another.

And then there are the nights like this. Dressed up, schmoozing at a corporate party, watching their targets and exchanging the odd nod or glance to share small discoveries. Pretending to be a couple if they need to has stopped feeling awkward. She no longer stiffens slightly when he rests a gentle hand in the small of her back.

His fingers accidentally brush her neck as he helps her into her coat at the end of the night, and she leans in to his touch just a little, almost imperceptibly. They stroll to the Tube, so close that their arms brush against each other occasionally. She’s a teeny bit tipsy, her smiles softer, her eyes less guarded, her gaze on him more fond, lingering a little. They’ve neither of them dated anyone else since their relationships ended a few months ago. They’ve not drifted together either, but the companionship between them, the understanding, has deepened. On nights like this, it feels like there’s an unspoken promise in the air. She smiles softly as she bids him goodnight at the station, and he goes on back to his flat with a silly grin on his face that he’s relieved no one can see.

Sometimes it’s the best job in the world.


End file.
